Stockton, R., Aplt. v. Wetzel ( 2020 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA
EASTERN DISTRICT
RONALD STOCKTON, : No. 23 EAP 2019
:
Appellant : Appeal from the Order of
: Commonwealth Court dated July 8,
: 2019 and exited July 8, 2019 at No.
v. : 508 MD 2018.
:
:
SECRETARY OF CORRECTIONS-JOHN :
WETZEL, CHIEF GRIEVANCE OFFICER :
KERI MOORE, ACCOUNTANT 1- :
CHRISTINE SPENCER, :
:
Appellees :
CONCURRING STATEMENT
JUSTICE WECHT DECIDED: April 22, 2020
I concur in the Court’s decision to affirm the Commonwealth Court’s order
dismissing Ronald Stockton’s petition for review. I write separately to highlight the ways
in which I believe the courts of our Commonwealth have done a disservice here.
Stockton claims that his sentencing orders are invalid. Stockton originally was
sentenced in 2007, but he then received new (unsigned) orders in 2010 and again in 2012
(this time signed, but by a different judge). The 2007 orders imposed costs and fees
totaling $489 at each docket number, in addition to two concurrent sentences of 10 to 20
years’ imprisonment. The 2010 and 2012 orders, meanwhile, imposed costs and fees of
$606.64 and $571.30 at the respective docket numbers and changed Stockton’s term of
imprisonment to 5 to 10 years at each docket, but running consecutively. The terms of
the imprisonment reflected in the 2010 and 2012 orders were consistent with the sentence
that the trial court orally described in the first instance.
Stockton first filed a claim under Act 84, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9728, claiming that the
Department of Corrections (“DOC”) was deducting funds from his account in reliance
upon “false” documents, referring to the allegedly invalid sentencing orders. Amended
Petition for Review, 31 MD 2011, at ¶¶ 9, 14. The Commonwealth Court dismissed
Stockton’s petition, reasoning that his complaint was barred by the six-month statute of
limitations. Stockton v. Dougherty, 31 MD 2011 (Pa. Cmwlth. July 10, 2012). We affirmed
the Commonwealth Court’s decision in a per curiam order. Stockton v. Dougherty, 88
A.3d 968 (Pa. 2014) (per curiam).
Next, in October 2012, Stockton filed a pro se petition under the Post Conviction
Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46, claiming, inter alia, that DOC was deducting
funds from his accounts illegally because his sentencing orders were invalid. At a hearing
regarding the petition, Stockton’s counsel raised the deductions issue. The
Commonwealth’s attorney responded that the deductions issue was not a claim that could
be made under the PCRA. See Notes of Testimony, PCRA Hearing, 12/1/2014, at 23
(“That’s not a PCRA issue.”); id. at 25 (“That doesn’t fall under [the] PCRA, Your Honor,
so we wouldn’t handle that. . . . [I]t would not [be] for this Court to address.”). The PCRA
court apparently agreed with the Commonwealth, noting in its decision that the deductions
issue was “improperly raised in [Stockton’s] PCRA petition.” PCRA Ct. Op., 8/10/2015,
at 6 n.5. Stockton, in the court’s view, “should have brought his petition as a petition for
review of a governmental determination under the Commonwealth Court’s original
jurisdiction.” Id.
Although Stockton asked to pursue his appeal pro se, arguing that his counsel “left
out assertions in [the] original [PCRA] Petition,” Pro Se Notice of Appeal, 661 EDA 2015,
at unpaginated 1; see also id. (asking that his counsel “not waive any issues on appeal
that [Stockton] raised”), Stockton’s counsel did not raise the deductions issue in
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Stockton’s Superior Court brief. See Stockton’s Brief, 661 EDA 2015. The Superior Court
affirmed the PCRA court’s order dismissing the PCRA petition without mentioning the
deductions issue. Commonwealth v. Stockton, 661 EDA 2015, 2016 WL 1052210 (Pa.
Super. Mar. 16, 2016). We denied allocatur. Commonwealth v. Stockton, 144 A.3d 200(Pa. 2016) (per curiam).
Stockton took the PCRA court’s advice and filed a petition for review in the
Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction. This time, the Commonwealth Court
determined that, “[t]o the extent that [Stockton] seeks to have the sentencing orders
vacated,” it lacked jurisdiction to grant the requested relief. Stockton v. Wetzel,
Memorandum and Order, 508 MD 2018, at unpaginated 2 (Pa. Cmwlth. July 8, 2019).
The court observed that it was not the correct forum for Stockton to “collaterally attack a
criminal sentence.” Id.The end result is this. Stockton filed a PCRA claim in part based upon his claim
that DOC illegally deducted money from his account. The PCRA court dismissed the
deductions claim, writing that Stockton should have pursued such a claim in the
Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction. Stockton then filed his claim in the
Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction. The Commonwealth Court concluded that
Stockton was collaterally attacking his sentence and dismissed the claim, for lack of
jurisdiction. Our courts have directed Stockton to a dead end.
I believe that the Commonwealth Court was correct in concluding that Stockton
was making a collateral attack on his sentence. Although Stockton claims that an Act 84
suit is the appropriate vehicle to challenge the deductions, see Stockton’s Brief at 8, it is
apparent that he actually is attacking the validity of his sentence. See Stockton’s Reply
Brief at 5 (“According to the letter of the law we can go so far as to say technically
Appe[llant] is not sentenced at all as it was not done in the time prescribed by law.”).
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While Stockton wishes to have DOC stop deducting funds from his account, adjudication
of that issue requires a determination of whether his sentence is valid. And “the language
of the PCRA clearly requires that an individual seeking relief from the judgment of
sentence itself . . . pursue his request for relief through the PCRA.” Commonwealth v.
Descardes, 136 A.3d 493, 501 (Pa. 2016).
Stockton has not been well-served by the courts of this Commonwealth. No
matter what the underlying merits of a claim may be, our courts must be open to all those
who come before them, seeking to invoke their jurisdiction. It was not appropriate for our
courts to toss Stockton’s claims back and forth, rather than adjudicating those claims, no
matter what the end result may be. We do injustice when we do not give full consideration
to each and every individual that seeks relief from our Commonwealth’s courts, no matter
that individual’s incarceration status.
There should have been a way to direct Stockton to the appropriate tribunal. When
the Commonwealth Court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over Stockton’s appeal, the
court should have turned its attention to Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 751,
entitled “Transfer of Erroneously Filed Cases.” That rule states:
(a) General rule. If an appeal or other matter is taken to or brought in a
court or magisterial district which does not have jurisdiction of the appeal or
other matter, the court or magisterial district judge shall not quash such
appeal or dismiss the matter, but shall transfer the record thereof to the
proper court of this Commonwealth, where the appeal or other matter shall
be treated as if originally filed in transferee court on the date first filed in a
court or magisterial district.
Pa.R.A.P. 751(a) (emphasis added); see also 42 Pa.C.S. § 5103(a). The language of
Rule 751 does not seem to allow any leeway. A court “shall transfer the record thereof
to the proper court.”1 In choosing to dismiss the matter, the Commonwealth Court relied
1 I recognize that a more typical situation involving transfer involves a notice of
appeal that a party erroneously files in the wrong court. For example, a party could appeal
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upon its own precedent in Guarrasi v. Scott, 25 A.3d 394 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2011). Guarrasi,
however, involved an individual who had a PCRA petition pending when he filed his
petition for review in the Commonwealth Court. See id. at 402. Thus, it does not
necessarily dictate the outcome of the Commonwealth Court’s dismissal in this instance.
There are instances in which this Court has refused to transfer a matter,
notwithstanding Rule 751’s clear language. Recently, in Assouline v. Reynolds, 219 A.3d
1131 (Pa. 2019), given a party’s “tortured and ill-fated attempt to plead [the] matter as a
landlord-tenant action,” we ordered the lower court to dismiss the case, rather than
transfer it. Id. at 1141. Assouline cited to a plurality opinion in Smock v. Commonwealth,
436 A.2d 615 (Pa. 1981), in which three Justices agreed that “[i]n appropriate
circumstances, a court may refuse, in the interest of judicial economy, to transfer a matter
where that court determines that under no circumstances could the transferee tribunal
grant the requested relief.” Id. at 617. The plurality opinion in Smock did not cite Rule
751 or Section 5103. Rather, the plurality cited Meehan v. Cheltenham Township, 189
A.2d 593 (Pa. 1963). In Meehan, a plaintiff brought an unjust enrichment claim in equity,
rather than at law. We determined that the law court had jurisdiction and that the claim
could not lie in equity. However, we decided the underlying merits of the case anyway,
reasoning that, “since the procedure upon transfer to the law side would be identical with
that below, we will decide the case on the merits in order to terminate this litigation.” Id.
at 595. It should be noted that Meehan was decided before Rule 751 was promulgated
in 1975. However, it is a far leap from our decision in Meehan, involving a plaintiff filing
in equity, rather than at law, to a decision by the Commonwealth Court to dismiss a
a tax assessment dispute to the Superior Court, which would then transfer the appeal to
the Commonwealth Court. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 762. However, the Superior Court has also
transferred an appeal from a PCRA court to the Commonwealth Court’s original
jurisdiction. Commonwealth v. Davis, 2015 WL 7301634 (Pa. Super. Apr. 9, 2015).
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collateral attack on a criminal conviction, rather than transfer the matter to a PCRA court.
Assouline’s reliance upon the Smock plurality, which in turn relied upon Meehan, now
appears a tenuous jurisprudential path, exemplifying the danger of creating (what appear
to be) narrow judicial exceptions that eventually can exceed the scope of a rule’s clear
language.
In the interest of stare decisis, I agree here that we can apply the narrow, judicially-
created exception to Rule 751. Stockton himself conceded that he did “not have a leg to
stand on” under the PCRA because of the jurisdictional time bar. Petitioner’s Response
to Corrections Respondents’ Preliminary Objections, 508 MD 2018 at ¶ 13; cf. Stockton’s
Brief at 9 (seemingly conceding that a PCRA petition would be “[f]utile”). Applying the
Smock plurality’s judicially-created exception, I agree that the Commonwealth Court did
not err in dismissing Stockton’s petition. Holding Stockton to his litigation position in this
case, namely his concession that “under no circumstances” could a PCRA court “grant
the requested relief,” Smock, 436 A.2d at 617 (plurality), I concur in the Court’s decision
to affirm the Commonwealth Court’s order. While I joined the opinion in Assouline, further
reflection leads me to believe that we may need to revisit our judicially-created exception
to Rule 751 in an appropriate case.
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